Maesa unlocks continuous demand and supply planning

In the fast-moving world of consumer goods, particularly the trend-driven beauty industry, the ability to respond quickly to change is a powerful competitive advantage. For Maesa, a leading beauty incubator, success depends on navigating shifting demand signals and product launches.

As the company grew, its static, monthly planning models became a constraint. Their legacy system couldn’t keep pace with a market where products can go viral overnight, creating a disconnect between plans and operational reality.

According to Kyle Friedrichs, Maesa’s senior director of operational excellence, these limitations created a critical set of challenges:

• Limited visibility into fast-changing demand
• Slow response times to component shortages
• Time-consuming manual workarounds for out-of-date forecasts
• Strategic decisions that were increasingly detached from reality

Rather than replacing systems in isolation, Maesa’s leadership team recognized that a unified, end-to-end supply chain planning environment would bring a heightened level of agility to the organization that disparate systems could not deliver. Maesa’s finance team was already using Anaplan for FP&A, and Friedrichs admired Anaplan’s flexibility and cross-functional connectivity. Once he discovered the agile planning and continuous forecasting capabilities of Anaplan’s suite of AI-driven supply chain applications, the right decision became clear.

From reactive to proactive: A transformation in speed

Starting with Anaplan’s Demand Planning application, Maesa shifted from its rigid quarterly forecasting to a more dynamic, continuous approach. Planners could now update forecasts as new customer orders arrived, and market data became available, allowing the organization to respond quickly and accurately to changes in demand.

Maesa improved its item-level forecast accuracy by approximately ten percentage points. For a business operating at scale, that significant improvement translated directly into better inventory alignment, reduced waste, and fewer downstream disruptions from stockouts.

Maesa’s planners gained confidence in the forecasts they were sharing with the rest of the organization. Because forecasting adjustments were easier to make and reflected current data, planning conversations shifted to focus on moving in a more informed, strategic direction.

The power of integrated supply chain planning

With more accurate and timely forecasts in place, Maesa turned its attention to how those insights flowed into supply planning, implementing Anaplan’s Supply Planning application. Previously, component planning and shortage identification often lagged weeks behind reality, limiting the team’s ability to respond proactively. By connecting demand planning outputs directly to supply planning models in Anaplan, Maesa shortened that feedback loop from weeks to days.

A key benefit of an integrated planning process is that scenario modeling becomes a more accessible exercise. Running supply and demand scenarios allowed planners at Maesa to explore alternatives and test new approaches more efficiently.

Leveraging the built-in best practices of Anaplan’s ready-to-deploy applications, Maesa created a supply and demand planning environment in just months. This rapid time to value enabled them to evaluate the impact of decisions with confidence like expediting a shipment or shifting production in real time, eliminating the delays caused by slow batch updates.

Anaplan’s Demand Planning application empowers planners to:

• Improve forecast accuracy by combining statistical models with real-time commercial insights from sales and marketing teams.
• Proactively sense and respond to change by running “what-if” scenarios for new product launches, promotions, or market disruptions.
• Create a single, consensus demand plan that aligns stakeholders across the entire organization, from finance to operations.

Anaplan’s Supply Planning application empowers planners to:

• Intelligently balance supply with demand by synchronizing production, inventory, and distribution plans in real time.
• Optimize inventory levels to reduce holding costs and minimize the risk of stockouts, ensuring products are available when and where they’re needed.
• Build a more resilient supply chain by modeling the impact of potential disruptions and developing contingency plans in advance.

Building a more resilient future

For Maesa, this end-to-end planning approach was about changing how decisions are made. By improving forecast accuracy and shortening planning cycles, Maesa’s supply, demand, and material planners gained the flexibility and confidence to thrive in a fast-changing market. This journey illustrates how modern supply chains can move beyond rigid planning models toward a responsive, resilient approach that keeps pace with both growth and uncertainty.